Star Landscape Photography-How to do it

 This is Yosemite Valley view, photographed last week about 730PM.  The tricks to getting good star photography with out star trails are these:

Use a wide angle fast lens 10-30 mm, ideally 2.8 or faster

Use a camera that allows you to shoot at 800 ISO to 3200 ISO with little to no noise

Include the landscape in the scene

Expose at widest aperture and VIP,  prefocus to a distant object manually as light is getting dim, and turn off auto focus to lock the focus. Do not touch the lens after that

Expose for about 10-30 sec, depending on the lens.

To avoid star trails divide the Focal length of the lens into 600 to give you the maximum exposure time to avoid star trails. Example, a 20mm lens allows up to 30 sec exposure.  Bracket times/ISO's to see the best shot.

Use a tripod. Fire the shutter with a cable, wireless or self-timer to avoid camera shake

A tungsten white balance keeps the sky blue
Turn off long exposure noise reduction

In this image, El Capitan is on the left with night climbers and their head lamps.

Camera was a Canon EOS M with a 22mm pancake lens.  ISO 1600, f2, 15 second exposure, fired with 2 sec self timer.

Enjoy, Jeff

Coyote in Snow

The Yosemite coyotes are not too afraid of humans. I suspect they are thrown snacks occasionally. These coyote was right behind our condo at Yosemite West. Shot with a Tamron 28-300 on a Maxxum 7D. Enjoy, Jeff

Yosemite Pre Dawn

I love this graphic shot taken at 4:30 in the AM, just as dawn is starting. The crescent moon was captured, with the deep rich blue of the sky. Maxxum7D with Tamron 11-18 wide angle zoom. Enjoy, Jeff

Yosemite Valley at Morning

Taken with a Minolta Maxxum 7D DSLR, this early morning shot shows the value of getting up early to catch great light. This soft warm light creates a mood, an emotion which can make your images stand apart. A Tamron 11-18 wide angle zoom captured the scene. Enjoy, Jeff

Yosemite Valley Rainbow

Taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX 5, this beautiful scene unfolded after a day of intermittent snow and rain. Lesson, after a rainstorm at day's end the patient find rainbows!

Yosemite Valley

Just returned from a terrific photo workshop with Phil Hawkins (http://yosemitephotoworkshops.com) over Memorial Day. Phil is a great teacher and knows Yosemite like the back of his hand. He knows the all important matter......the light, when and how to capture it. This and the next 7 images were all taken with the iPhone 4, using True HDR to capture and Photoforge for minimal editing. Even Phil was amazed at the quality of these photos! As I develop images from my "real cameras". the Maxxum 7D DSLR and the Lumix LX5. I'll post them shortly. Enjoy, Jeff